Ubuntu Linux File Associations

After trying different Music/Media Players in Ubuntu Linux, I decided that my favorite one is Amarok. It has a lot of good functional features for music fanatics like me (over 7000 MP3s) that need good collection management. Its Collection/Library works similar to Winamp’s Media Library, although some improvements can be made to it (that’s another post).

My problem was that if I was browsing my MP3 files and decided to start playing a song from a Nautilus window by double-clicking the file, it would open in Xine. No thanks, that’s not what I want! The file association wasn’t what I wanted. Thinking that I could simply access File Association settings like in Windows, I set out to find these settings. Of course, there wasn’t anything similar to this.

This plagued me for a couple of weeks and in the back of my mind, I knew it would be the simplest stupid setting somewhere that I just couldn’t find. So I set out to find the answer…

Although, in this post, I’m specifically talking about MP3/OGG files, these steps should work with any file-type and any application that can open those file-types.

I knew that I could simply right-click on a file, point to Open With and select an application from the list.

Amarok wouldn’t show in that list! Once I selected “Open with Other Application…” and selected Amarok, it then showed in the list of Open with applications.

So every time I wanted to open an MP3/OGG file, I would have to right-click, point to Open with and select Amarok.

That’s still not good enough. I need to double-click only!

After reading a certain post on the Ubuntu Forums, the answer was so obvious, I literally slapped my forehead!

Right-click on a file of the type you wish to set a default application to open it with

Select Properties

Select the Open With tab (all makes sense, now, doesn’t it??)

Select the application you want associated with that file-type

Click OK

Wow… that was easy! Double-click the file to see if it opens in your application. Funny thing is, I saw that tab before and used it for another file-type and for some reason, I thought that it would set the default for that file only! Doh! I didn’t notice the message at the top of that tab: